To scale up production efforts
A coalition of companies and groups like the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amgen, Inc., with offices in Seattle and Bothell, are working together to produce more of the experimental Ebola drug ZMapp, Bloomberg reported on Friday.
The drug, which is in incredibly short supply, has been one of a handful of experimental drugs to treat victims of the deadly Ebola virus, which has claimed more than 4,500 lives in West Africa. Because it has not gone through all the rounds of clinical testing, however, it was in short supply as the Ebola crisis grew. As a result, the epidemic has expanded faster than the supply of the drug.
ZMapp made headlines when it was used on humans for the first time in August. Two American medical missionaries, Nancy Writebol and Kent Brantly, received the treatment and survived Ebola. Other studies have shown that the drug also helps protect monkeys from the illness. Now, it can't be produced fast enough.
Amgen hopes to come up with a new production method for ZMapp, while the Gates Foundation donated $150,000 to Mapp Pharmaceutical Inc. — which created the drug — to scale up production efforts, according to Bloomberg.